Related Stories

If you can't be the brightest star out of 100 billion, second brightest isn't bad - especially when you're one of the most dangerous.

That's just what astronomers have found, hidden in a flowery dust cloud near the centre of the Milky Way, according to their paper published in Astronomy and Astrophysics.

Named the 'Peony Nebula' star, it has been calculated to be as bright as 3.2 million suns. That's approaching the supremacy of the brightest known star in the galaxy, Eta Carina, which blazes at 4.7 million times our sun's light output.

The newfound super-bright star also takes on the mantle of perhaps being the second-most massive star in the galaxy, starting its life at more than 1000 times the mass of our sun. That's because stellar mass and brightness rise in tandem.

Rare find

Unlike stars the size of the sun and smaller, which are quiet common, super-giant stars are very rare in the universe today. What's more, they live only a fraction as long as smaller stars - just a billion years compared to six billion or more.

These two limitations make the stellar heavyweights pretty hard to study, since there aren't many to choose from.

Since such stars are so hard to scout out through the dust here in our home galaxy, astronomers have resorted to scavenging through distant galaxies to find them. But the new discovery could change that.

"We really need to build up a population to understand what's going on," Gull says.

Infrared light emitted by the stars cuts through the gas and dust and allows astronomers to detect stars shrouded in the interstellar mists.

Ticking time-bombs

The discovery of the Peony Nebula star suggests there are more giants out there hiding in the mists.

"There's no reason to believe this is unique," says paper co-author Dr Lida Oskinova of Potsdam University in Germany.

Besides being big and bright, the Peony Nebula star and Eta Carina are also ticking time-bombs.

Super-giant stars not only burn brighter and live shorter lives than other stars, their lives also tend to end badly - with a gigantic explosion called a supernova that can briefly outshine the entire galaxy and spread heavy elements far and wide.